


If Only You (Knew)

by LadyLondonderry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Homeless, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Magic, Mild Hurt/Comfort, yes okay yall can stop rolling ur eyes u know its me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 15:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15222107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLondonderry/pseuds/LadyLondonderry
Summary: Catch a busy train at a busy time. Find a seat and look like you’ve been there a while. Feign sleep. Look like you belong there. Look like you haven’t been living out of a rucksack for four months.Don’t look homeless.When Louis needs somewhere to go, he finds himself in an abandoned barn in the middle of nowhere. Unknown to him, he's stumbled on the home of someone else, and they're not too happy about it.





	If Only You (Knew)

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a prompt challenge that a group of us are participating in for the prompt "Need". To read the amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/need/works), and to see all fics written as part of the challenge, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wordplay_fic_challenge/works).

Catch a busy train at a busy time. Find a seat and look like you’ve been there a while. Feign sleep. Look like you belong there. Look like you haven’t been living out of a rucksack for four months.

Don’t look homeless.

The goal is London. He just has to make it to London without being noticed. London promises a lot of things, but above all the chance at warmth. In a small town where everyone recognizes your face, the people get less sympathetic. Less likely to let the vagabond settle inside where he’s clearly not a paying customer. 

He’s felt himself pushed away, separated from the town, little by  little over the last couple months. They tolerated him at first, and that’s all he needed, but as time went on their sympathetic looks turned cold, as the winter grew harsh so did their demeanor.  _ You were homeless, _ their expressions told him,  _ and we accepted that. But shouldn’t you be better by now? _

Well, when not even the local Tesco’s is willing to hire him to stock midnight produce, he doesn’t have a lot of hope of changing that.

London promises anonymity. As long as he can make himself look like he wasn’t sleeping rough, no job he’s applying for should have to know that he’s trying to work his way up from literal nothing. London promises a proper council that hasn’t known him since birth. London promises a weird, strangled sort of hope. He doesn’t have a hope for great things, he doesn’t expect his life to go back to the way it was a year ago, but he hopes for the chance to sleep somewhere without wind, where he doesn’t have to worry about getting rained or snowed on. Maybe, if he gets lucky, he hopes for warmth, and shoes that don’t let the slush soak in. 

— 

He doesn’t even last two hours.

Apparently most of the morning commuters are only on the train for about four stops, because suddenly he finds his carriage nearly empty. He probably could have blagged his way through, said he’d already shown his ticket, or if he’d been faster he could have pretended to be asleep. But he failed. 

That’s how he finds himself out in the cold. The train station that he’s left at is little more than a platform at the side of the tracks. There’s not even a shop selling hot breakfast foods he can take shelter in for a bit. The snow is only beginning to fall, but the temperature has already dropped and Louis stands there, teeth chattering, as he watches the train pick up speed without him. 

And then it’s gone, and he’s alone in the silence. The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach is telling him he should have stayed in town. Being this far from everything feels… dangerous. He’s not even sure which way to walk to find something other than the farm fields that seem to stretch out on either side of the platform.

Still, he can’t stay here. The wind is picking up and he’s going to need some place to shelter. A station this size likely only gets trains going through every hour or two, and he expects the weather will be much worse by then. The wind is biting, the snow piling on every surface it touches. His uncovered skin stings.

Looking around, he makes his decision based only on which road looks to be in better condition. Off in one direction it seems to turn into a dirt road before it disappears between fields of what is probably rapeseed in the summer months. In the other direction, well… at least the road is paved. Hopefully he’ll find some other public building before too long. A bus station, or local market. He’ll have to take his chances. 

He shoulders his backpack and sends up a prayer that he ends up somewhere safe tonight. 

— 

The snow has started up again, heavier than before by the time Louis finally comes across a building set up against the side of the road. He’s seen a few in the distance, but every time it looks far enough away that he doesn’t think he should go traipsing through a field to find out just  _ how _ far from the road it really is. With the way the storm is going now, he’s rather worried his visibility will fall to zero on the way and he’ll end up stranded, lost in a field with no sense of direction.

It’s a barn. It looks like it hasn’t been used in decades, what with the peeling paint and the way it all seems to be leaning rather precariously to the side. Still, Louis reasons it’s stood long enough, the chances of it collapsing in the next day or two aren’t  _ too _ likely… right? 

Right.

The large front door is jammed into the ground, probably from years of the barn slowly slanting down onto it, the red paint that was probably once bright and new barely visible now. Louis makes his way around the corner - teeth chattering and arms tight around himself, face stinging and frozen, to see if there’s another entrance hidden away. The side of the barn offers little except a boarded up window he could possibly crawl into, given enough time and leverage, but when he makes it all the way around to the back he breathes a sigh of relief. There’s a door right at the back corner that’s hanging open, swinging lazily with the wind as it whips up and calms down.

Louis hurries his way through the door, stopping just inside for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It occurs to him as he stands in the entrance, the light coming and going as the door swings freely, that there’s no guarantee he’s the only one who’s decided to take shelter here. He gulps down the fear that’s begun bubbling in his stomach, trying to be rational. This is the middle of nowhere - surely no one would be attempting to hide out in a barn miles from anywhere important? Especially somewhere like this that looks intent on collapsing if the wind blows a bit too hard. 

Probably at the most he’ll run into a fox den or something. A flight of pigeons in the rafters. 

Probably.

Even standing in the doorway, the temperature difference feels staggering compared to the outside. Without the wind blowing snow in every direction, getting both down his shirt and up his joggers, Louis is already feeling like he’s beginning to defrost. As his eyes adjust he begins to catalog the cavernous space he’s in - a wide open area stretching in front of him, with some sort of animal stalls lining both walls and a ladder leading up to a (definitely not safe) loft that stretches over half the barn. 

It seems empty; dusty and unused, with scattered hay and bags that probably once contained animal feed. Rusty machinery is piled in a couple corners, precarious heaps that stand taller than Louis. 

He’s already beginning to plan out how long he can stay here. It’s not warm, by any means, but he has a small supply of energy bars that he had slowly stocked up on lining the bottom of his backpack, and three water bottles. It’s not substantial by any means, but he can hopefully at least wait out the storm and then try his luck on another train heading south. 

Any port (or barn) in a storm. 

— 

There is nothing Harry Styles hates more than humans. 

They have no respect for spaces that clearly don’t belong to them, always trampling all over the land, no regard for the paths that nature has provided for them. Plus, they  _ smell. _ Always setting things alight and sucking in the smoke, leaving a putrid smell wafting through the air that makes Harry gag.

Harry hates humans, and he wants them to stay out of his home. 

They often come in groups, and that just makes them louder and harder to scare off. Today, he hears the shuffle of approaching footsteps and groans. Someday he’s going to set a jinx outside the barn that will turn everyone who tries to enter into more pleasant creatures. Hedgehogs, maybe. 

With a gumble, he stands from the couch he’s been lounging across and stretches tall, feeling his bones crack in the most satisfying way. Fine. A human wants to play? Harry can play. 

He looks out over the edge of the loft he’s on, at his carefully curated home that he’s spent almost a decade putting together, taking from the homes of humans who don’t realise the fae-made furniture they own (and wouldn’t truly appreciate even if they did know), and bartering with the imps the valley over for. His home is immaculate, beautiful and a touch gothic. The perfect thing to lounge about in, or to host get togethers with magical beings the countryside over. 

With a twitch of his fingers, it’s all gone. Replaced with dirt and hay and the remains of messy humans leaving their messy imprints. It looks just how he found it originally, desolate and decaying. Harry loves a touch of the macabe on occasion, but this just looks like the sort of place you wouldn’t want to sit down without first checking for needles.

He hears the door creak and steps back, into the shadows at the end of the loft. If the human is smart it won’t venture up to start with, but just in case… 

A flick of his wrist and all that’s left of him is his eyes - grey moons in the darkness. 

— 

Louis feels like he’s being watched. 

It’s a feeling he’s quite familiar with, and chalks it up to his mind playing tricks on him, still used to that feeling of being shooed from place to place in the small town he came from, uninhibited glares wherever he went. 

Here, in the empty, cavernous barn lit only by cracks between the wooden siding, he’s pretty sure he’s alone. He’s slowly walked the perimeter, peeking into the various stalls along the side and breathing a slow sigh of relief after finding them all empty. He hasn’t tried to make his way to the loft, but being fairly certain that the majority of it wouldn’t hold his weight, he feels pretty safe assuming anyone up there would be making horribly loud creaking noises as they moved around. 

He scopes out the floor of the barn for a good while before choosing a place to settle down. There isn’t any place to sit other than the floor unless he wants to perch atop some of the rusty machinery (no thank you, he’s not looking to get rust on his only set of warm clothes), so he ends up sitting with his back up against a wall of one of the stalls, in one of the more ample piles of straw. Straw is supposed to be warm, right? Certainly warmer than a cement floor.

Although honestly, it’s much warmer inside this barn than Louis would have expected. It’s not a sauna by any means, but knowing how heavily the snow is falling outside, he’s impressed (and grateful) that he’s warm enough his teeth aren’t even chattering. Someone up there must be smiling down on him.

It’s just as he’s thinking that, of course, that the nearest pile of metal and machinery comes rumbling down, shaking the very foundation as it scatters across the floor.

Louis flinches, frozen as he watches it crash all around him. The sound is deafening and he feels fear cut through his stomach at the knowledge that if he had been sitting much closer there’s a possibility he could be buried under the heap right now. 

It’s fine. He’s fine. It’s probably just from his walking around. He must have shifted something, kicked something as he walked by. That’s all. This barn has been standing too long for it to be toppled just from a bit of exploring. He’ll be fine.

The words don’t sound that reassuring, even as he tries to tell himself with confidence, but the idea of braving the snow storm that’s picking up outside is convincing enough for him to stay put. He pulls his backpack onto his lap and digs inside, pulling out the one dog-eared book he’s brought with him. The only one he still has from when he was a child. He opens it and reads the words he already knows by heart, using it to calm his racing heart rate.

_ Mr and Mrs Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive were perfectly normal, thank you very much. _

— 

With his legs swinging over the side of the loft, Harry gazes down at the human below him.

As far as humans go, he’s been… quiet. No raucous laughter, no unnecessary messing with things, Harry almost wouldn’t notice him if it weren’t for the smell. He smells like he hasn’t had a proper bath in weeks. Harry wrinkles his nose. Humans are all so filthy. 

Well. Time to get this human to go stink up somewhere else.

Harry looks around before choosing the edge of the loft, closest to where the human is sitting. He makes a fist and rubs his fingers together, smirking as the loft begins to crumble and give way. The debris litters down, small enough pieces that even if they hit the human (they probably won’t), they won’t cause  _ serious _ damage.

He watches as the human realises the danger and scrambles sideways, leaving his pack behind to get covered in dust. He can feel the way the human’s heart rate picks up, quick like a rabbit’s, and smiles to himself in triumph. This one is easy to scare. He won’t be staying around long.

As the dust and debris settle and Harry is left with about a square metre of missing loft (he can fix that), Harry feels the smirk slide off of his face. The human isn’t moving. He’s not running for the door. He’s curled up inside one of the stalls and is still as stone. Harry can feel the human’s heart still racing, but he’s not fleeing. Harry can almost feel the decision the human makes to stay in place, to burrow down further.

A stubborn one. Well. He can work with that.

— 

Once Louis feels something akin to calm, he scrambles up just long enough to grab his backpack and book, shaking off the rubble before dragging them to his new spot inside what he thinks must have been a horse stall at one point.

God. This barn must have been standing for decades and  _ today _ is the day is starts to crumble? That truly is his horrible luck.

He feels unsafe, the circumstances evaluating and reevaluating themselves in his mind. He can hear the storm outside by now, the wind whipping through the cracks in the barn. He’s not got anywhere near enough clothing to survive the snow storm, would surely end up with frostbite if not worse. But in here… he can’t let his guard down. Twice now he’s barely missed getting injured, and he’s been here only a few hours at best. If things keep going at this rate there won’t be a barn standing at this time tomorrow.

For the time being, he’s sure, it’s safer to stay in the barn. What are the chances? What are the chances that it would get any worse? Surely not high. Louis wasn’t the best at Stats class but surely that’s gotta be true. 

He carefully dusts off his book, coughing a little as it clouds the air. Distraction is a good choice. Distraction means he won’t keep dwelling on the possibilities. Give him something to focus on.

Chapter 3.  _ The Letters from No One. _

He’s only just to the part where they’ve packed up and are traveling toward the sea that Louis looks up again, eyes and mind fuzzy the way only a good book can make them. Something… something is wrong.

It takes him a minute to take in the problem. He smells… smoke. 

Smoke.

_ Fire. _

Louis jumps up, the book flying from his hand. He looks around wildly, adrenaline pumping through his system, for the source. Immediately, his eyes land on the red embers just outside of the stall he’s sequestered himself in. It’s in the hay right where he had been sitting earlier - glowing, catching embers, looking almost as if they’ve been placed there. 

Louis runs over and stamps at it. He’s not prepared to waste one of his precious bottles of water to put it out, but he works fast because his shoes are thin and he doesn’t want to have to worry about walking around with holes in his soles. 

It takes longer than he thought it should, the embers stubborn and scary at the same time. In a large, rickety wooden building that’s likely lost any fire retardant it once had, he knows that if this gets any bigger he’s going to have to get out of here  _ fast. _

Even when the embers seem to have disappeared, quashed under his shoes and only smoldering, he doesn’t dare look away for a long time. How did a fire start? It was where he was sitting - was the hay so dry that even the friction he made scrambling around enough to set it alight? He’s got a lighter stored in the outer pocket of his backpack, but surely just  _ owning _ a lighter shouldn’t be enough to start anything. It’s a fancy metal one with a cover that flips open - something he nicked from a smoke spot out back of an Asda a while ago when he was sure no one was looking (he figured he could light a fire for warmth at some point, should the situation come to that. Realistically he’s not sure he could do more than set a bit of pasta on fire, but he likes the idea). 

This was the third time. The third spike of adrenaline through his system. As he stands, staring at the burnt patch, feeling his heart hammering in his chest for the third time today, he feels the moment when it all becomes too much. Tears form in his eyes and he can’t do anything to stop them. In the echoey, cavernous silence of the barn he doesn’t want to make a noise, struggles to keep his breathing under control. The tears leak unbidden from his eyes but he just stands there and stares at the burnt remains. He can’t leave now. The storm is too great and he’s too far into the middle of nowhere. He can’t leave but surely he can’t stay here.

— 

Harry thinks there might be something wrong with this human.

Humans do a lot of dumb things, granted, but watching this one as he stands there staring down at the remains of the fire Harry had set, still as a statue even as his heart rate betrays him.

This isn’t how humans act. This isn’t how humans are _ supposed _ to act! The humans that come and shelter in his home are rowdy and selfish, here to lay claim to land that isn’t theirs and tear it apart. They are self indulgent and loud, leaving their rubbish everywhere and polluting the air with their voices, their smoke, their putrid breath. They get scared off after the second or third time Harry sends a small disaster upon them, valuing their lives more than the space they’ve tried to claim, leaving behind bottles and pipes and other substances Harry has to clean out of his carpet once he takes the glamour off. Once in a while he gets a human or two so drunk they’re toppling as they stumble in, vomiting and passing out but even they turn tail eventually. 

Harry growls in frustration, not even attempting to be quiet about it. His voice echoes through the barn, and the human below him flinches, before looking up and around wildly, wide eyes passing unseeingly over Harry’s invisible form at the edge of the loft.

Harry swings his feet and jumps, somewhere between floating and falling as he alights with barely a tap on the concrete floor below.

He looks down and finds his shadow, leaning over and grabbing ahold of it with one hand and bringing it up to his own height. He sees the moment the human lays eyes on the shadow, the single step he takes backward, the fear in his eyes.

“Leave,” Harry says, doing his best impression of his unseelie father. “This is not your home!”

The human takes another step back, hitting the side of one of the animal stalls. He gapes and Harry snarls. With both hands he shapes his shadow into something more formidable and imposing, giving it two sets of horns and muscles that he personally doesn’t have.

“Well?” Harry asks, keeping his voice low. “Leave! You do not belong here!”

The human grows smaller with every word, tensing and drawing in on himself. His eyes are wet, Harry notes. That knowledge feels important, even as he pushes it down as something trivial.

The human doesn’t leave. He looks up at Harry’s shadow with fear and trembling, eyes wide and luminous in the dusky dark. He doesn’t leave, but he speaks.

“Please.”

It’s quiet as a mouse, and another human might not have heard him. Harry blinks.

“Please what?” he asks. He tries to snarl and put that unseelie timbre into it, yet he finds his volume lowering just a little bit, to match the human’s.

“Please d-don’t make me leave,” the human whispers. His eyes are wet and he is small. Harry isn’t large but this human is small.

“Why?” snaps Harry. “You do not own this space, human! This is not a place to come and go as you please! Your kind believes they own the entire world! Your kind takes and takes and grabs at what does not belong to them! This is  _ not your home!” _

The human crumbles.

He folds in on himself covering his face as the most horrible of sobs rips through him like a beast emerging. Harry watches, a frown on his face and something squirming in his heart that he hasn’t felt in a long time as this human shakes and quakes and falls apart. 

_ “Please,” _ the human sobs. “I- I  _ know _ that humans a-are the worst.” His breaths come out in shuddery gasps. “I  _ know _ . I- I only need tonight. Only until- until the storm is over. P-please, I have nowhere to- to go. I have no home. I don’t want to take or- or grab. I just don’t have anywhere to  _ go-” _

“You are human,” Harry says. He feels… confused. “You have everywhere to go. The world belongs to your kind. You  _ came _ from somewhere!”

The human shakes his head. He looks to have given up, like a spark inside of him has extinguished. “I was… kicked out,” he says. “They rejected me. I-I don’t have anywhere.”

Something inside of Harry twists with a violence, a wrenching in his gut. With both hands he takes his shadow and crumples it down, putting it back to the floor where it belongs. A blink and he becomes visible, his corporeal form returned. The human jumps only a little, seemingly too exhausted to even be surprised. 

“Kicked out,” Harry says, rolling the words around in his tongue. “What could you have done?” he asks. He’s unsure if his voice is imposing or comforting. “What could possibly be so bad that humans would reject their own?”

The human laughs, a humourless, hollow thing. Dried tears glitter on his cheeks as he keeps his arms around himself. “Humans reject each other all the time. Any difference is too much of a difference for a human. We are ruthless.”

Oh, how Harry knows. “Yes, but what did  _ you _ do, human? What could possibly be so bad?”

“I-” The human swallows, his lips downturned like he’s trying to hold himself together. “I loved a boy.”

Harry waits for the human to say more, but he does not. “And?” he prompts.

“And- and that’s it. I loved a boy and- I’m not supposed to. They rejected me because that’s not how I’m supposed to be.”

Harry only lived with humans for a short period of time. As a changeling, he was given to a human to raise, and until he was thirteen he lived among humans. A small village in the cold mountains of Scotland, where the old outnumbered the young. Even before he knew that he was unseelie, the humans seemed to be able to tell. In a close-knit community where everyone knows everyone and burdens are shared, Harry had been left on the outside, ostracised, from the very beginning. It was almost a relief when he reached his flowering years and his parents returned for him, throwing him into the wild lives of the unseelie court and a world that he should have been a part of all along, if he had only known.

Changelings do not truly belong anywhere, and Harry learned that the hard way. But humans… humans are supposed to have their own kind.

“That’s it?” Harry snaps. “They reject you because of _ love? _ Humans will tear themselves apart, abandon their own, because of something so necessary?”

The human jerks his head in a nod.

“What is your name, human?”

The human has apparently never heard of the unseelie and the power a name can give them, because he doesn’t hesitate. “Louis,” he mumbles. 

“Louis,” says Harry. “I am not human, and I do not care for humans.”

Louis swallows.

“My name is Harry. I am a changeling and I am a fae and I am of the unseelie court. I spend my days chasing humans from my home.”

“I’m- I’m sorry—”

Harry holds his hand up. “These humans take what is not theirs. They own already and yet they look for more. They choose my home because they find thrills in laying claim to things that they have no claim to. You, on the other hand, have nothing.”

Louis purses his downturned lips, tears forming in his eyes again. Harry doesn’t like the tears.

“You shall stay here,” Harry says.

At this, Louis’s head snaps up, his eyes meeting Harry’s. “I- You-” 

“I will not change my mind,” says Harry. “And I am unseelie. You should not argue with my kind. Again.”

He watches the mix of emotions cross Louis’s face. Humans are incredibly easy to read. This should not be too hard. He will give the human a room and that will be that. 

“I’m, um, thankful,” Louis says eventually. He still looks rather teary and confused but he continues. “Um, you live here, though? In this barn?”

Ah yes. This barn. “I do,” says Harry. “Would you like to see it?”

He doesn’t wait for Louis to respond, instead raising his arms and with it the curtain of glamour. Gone is the rusty machinery and hay and dirty animal stalls. Returned is his carefully put-together home, a mix of styles between his world and the human world, gothic and light and airy. The rug they stand on a swirl of starry designs, the dining room where Louis is now standing holding a blush pink table and chairs. He watches as Louis takes in the change, eyes wide as saucers. 

“Come,” says Harry. “You smell of filth. I will show you to the bath.”

— — —

Louis steps out of the black marble claw-foot tub and wraps himself in one of Harry’s towels. It smells of lavender, but everything in this house does at some point or other. Even in fall, the flowers that bloom inside the barn are fresh and colourful. Harry says it’s an unseelie thing. Louis says he just plants them at the wrong time. 

“Harry?” he calls, sticking his head through the doorway. “Are you awake yet?”

_ “No,” _ comes the grumbling response from the loft above him. Louis smiles. When Harry goes to visit court he always comes back in the early hours smelling terrifically drunk and teetering like a baby fawn on rickety legs. He’s tried a few times to get Louis to join him, but Louis knows better. Just because one unseelie has taken a liking to him, he doesn’t expect the same response from Harry’s cold blooded (literally) family.

After drying off a bit, Louis switches the towel for a bathrobe (there is nothing Harry loves more than pretending he’s terribly fancy. The robe smells of honeysuckle) and heads for the stairs to the loft. He knows that Harry’s sensitive ears are going to be ringing between the clanging of the metal stairs and the headache he definitely has from whatever happened the night before. Still, Louis tries to walk with gentle footsteps over to the large bed that Harry is sprawled out upon, crawling onto the empty side (adjusting his robe as it falls open) and petting back the long strands of hair that cover Harry’s face.

Harry opens his eyes and squints over at Louis. “I hate how awake and alive you look right now,” he says. 

Louis knows he doesn’t mean it. “Love you too,” he says.

“When I’m not dying will you read me another chapter?” Harry asks.

“Of course,” Louis says. The bookshelf next to their bed that Harry acquired soon after Louis moved from the spare bedroom to share Harry’s room is small, but plays host to all seven Harry Potter books, from Louis’s old tattered copy to six newer ones acquired from secondhand shops that Louis has explored. He’s found a job in town that doesn’t pay much, but enough to make Louis feel like he’s not simply a burden. No one there questions when his boyfriend comes to walk him home.

Their bookmark resides in the sixth book, right near the end. Louis gets the feeling he’s going to lose his voice when they read through the seventh. Harry gets too upset by cliffhangers. 

“Love you, human,” Harry mumbles, closing his eyes again.

Louis smiles and settles in next to him. There’s no place like home.

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeeeey and [here's the fic post!](http://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com/post/175723530679/if-you-only-knew-ladylondonderry)


End file.
